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Ali Farka Touré, Grammy-Winning Musician of West Africa, Dies

Ali Farka Touré, the self-taught Malian guitarist and songwriter who merged West African traditions with the blues and carried his music to a worldwide audience, winning two Grammy Awards, died in his sleep on Monday at his farm in the village of Niafunke in northwestern Mali, the Ministry of Culture of Mali announced.

He was either 66 or 67; he was born in 1939 but he did not know his birth date. His record company, World Circuit Records, said he had suffered from bone cancer.

Mr. Touré's deep grounding in Malian traditions made him one of African music's most profound innovators. "Mali is first and foremost a library of the history of African music," he said in a 2005 interview with the world-music magazine Fly. "It is also the sharing of history, legend, biography of Africa."

In Mali he was considered a national hero. At the news of his death, government radio stations there suspended regular programming to play his music.

Mr. Touré collaborated widely, winning Grammys for albums he made with the American guitarist Ry Cooder ("Talking Timbuktu" in 1994) and with the Malian griot Toumani Diabaté ("In the Heart of the Moon," 2005). He also recorded with the American bluesman Taj Mahal.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Cooder said: "It's important for a traditional performer to be coming from a place and tradition, and most people who are like that tend to be part of their scene rather than transcendent of their scene. That's what their calling is all about. But Ali was a seeker. There was powerful psychology there. He was not governed by anything. He was free to move about in his mind."

Mr. Touré forged connections between the hypnotic modal riffs of Malian songs and the driving one-chord boogie of American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker; he mingled the plucked patterns of traditional songs with the aggressive lead-guitar lines of rock. He sang in various West African languages -- his own Sonrai as well as Songhai, Bambara, Peul, Tamasheck and others -- reflecting the traditional foundations of the songs he wrote. His lyrics, in West African style, represented the conscience of a community, urging listeners to work hard, honor the past and act virtuously.

Mr. Touré was his family's 10th child, and the first to survive infancy. "Farka," a nickname, means "donkey," an animal praised for its tenacity. No information was available on his immediate survivors.

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Unlike many West African musicians, Mr. Touré was not born into a musical dynasty; rather, he was drawn to music despite the wishes of his family. Hearing the music of spirit ceremonies, he taught himself to play the njurkle, a one-stringed West African lute, in 1950, then the n'jarka, a one-stringed fiddle, and later the n'goni, a four-stringed lute.

When he was about 13, after an encounter with a snake, he suffered attacks he believed to have been caused by contact with the spirit world. Sent away for a year to be cured, he returned as someone who was recognized for the ability to communicate with spirits. "I have all the spirits," he wrote in liner notes to the collection "Radio Mali" (World Circuit/Nonesuch). "I work the spirits and I work with the spirits."

After seeing the Guinean guitarist Keita Fodeba, he took up the guitar in the mid-1950's and joined a local band. Mali became independent of France in 1960, and in 1962 Mr. Touré became the leader of the Niafunke village cultural troupe, dedicated to preserving local culture. At the same time, he was listening to American soul, blues and funk, which he heard as rooted in the music of West Africa.

In 1970 Mr. Touré moved to Bamako, the nation's capital, where he became an engineer at Radio Mali and a frequent performer on the air. Six albums of music recorded at Radio Mali were released in France in the 1970's. In 1980, he returned to his hometown, Niafunke, and established a farm that he tended between musical engagements. He toured Africa widely, establishing a reputation across West Africa.

In 1987 he performed in Britain and began recording for international release with "Ali Farka Touré" (World Circuit/Nonesuch). The stark propulsion of his music, and its hints of electric blues, made him a star on the world-music circuit, and he toured the United States, Europe and Japan.

Around 2000 he retired from touring to return to his farm. He often said that he considered himself a farmer above all, and in 2004 he was elected mayor of the 53 villages of the Niafunke region. He established the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, nurturing younger Malian musicians, and he continued to perform in Mali. But he still made occasional international forays; his final concert was last year at a festival in Nice, France.